beyond command and control

Knowledge: the antidote to risk

Without knowledge, change programmes can go disastrously wrong, often putting the enterprise at risk. Most change programmes promote ideas, not knowledge. It is risky to pursue ideas merely because they are plausible.

Managers think the numbers they look at constitute knowledge, they do not. They represent the score, they say nothing about the means. And acting on the score without knowledge of the means is the most common form of tampering.